Ballerina stays inside

Press, 28 August 1979, Page 1

Ballerina stays inside

NZPA-Reuter New York The United States and the Soviet Union continued their diplomatic stand-off yesterday while a Soviet airliner with the ballerina, - Lyudmila Vlasova, and 67 other Russians aboard remained grounded at New York for a third day. The principal United States negotiator, Mr Donald McHenry, said at an airport news conference that the negotiations to end the stalemate were continuing in an “amicable” atmosphere. Mr McHenry, deputy United States representative to the United Nations, said American officials

wanted the 36-year-old Bolshoi ballerina, whose husband defected to the United States last week, to assure them in a “noncoercive, non-hostile environment” that she is leaving of her own free will. He said this might take place aboard the Soviet Ilyushin aircraft, with or without Soviet officials present — a departure from American insistence on Sunday that Miss Vlasova must leave the plane for an interview.

“We don’t care who is there,” he said. “She just has to feel she is free (to make a decision.)”

Russian officials contend that Miss Vlasova wants to return to the Soviet Union without her husband

and she refuses to get off the Aeroflot aircraft because she fears American authorities will take her into custody. However, the Soviet Union apparently did not find the offer of an onboard interview acceptable. Mr McHenry said President Carter had been “actively involved” in the negotiations from the Camp David presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains outside Washington. He did not elaborate. An attorney for Miss Vlasova’s husband, Alexander Godunov, also a dancer, said at Kennedy Airport, where the plane

has been detained since 10 a.m. on Saturday (New Zealand time) that the two Bolshoi dancers had agreed to defect together. Asked why the two had not acted together, Mr Orville Schell said only that Mr Godunov had “naively” thought he would be able to see his wife after defecting, but when he tried to reach her “the curtain was down.” Food and other supplies are being carried aboard the aircraft periodically. Air-conditioning has been provided for the passengers, including 13 children, who were described as tired, bored and uncomfortable.